A white man on Texas death row for nearly 30 years could be freed because an appeals court has ruled that prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from his jury in the belief that blacks empathize with defendants.

The Supreme Court, nearing the end of a term marked by a host of second-guess rulings on death penalty sentences, concluded Monday that the attorney for a man convicted of killing a tavern owner had done sloppy work.

The Supreme Court on Monday emphasized that excluding minorities from juries hurts the integrity of the criminal justice system as it sided with defendants from Texas and California who claimed that prosecutors systematically removed black jurors.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen will join a federal appeals court already dominated by Republican judges with a record of toughness in death penalty cases but not easy to pigeon-hole on other constitutional issues.